


Rhododendron (beware)

by S_Horne



Series: August in Bloom [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, childhood fears, monsters under the bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 05:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Horne/pseuds/S_Horne
Summary: “I’m scared.”Steve sighed. He was exhausted, bone-tired after having Peter crawl into bed beside him for days on end.“I know you are,” Steve murmured, lifting his arm to let Peter cuddle into his chest, “but you really need to start sleeping in your own bed soon.”“But they’re there,” Peter said with a wobble in his voice. “They can’t get me in your room.”/Peter develops a new phobia. Luckily, his Daddy is an engineering genius





	Rhododendron (beware)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 2k of monsters-under-the-bed. Don't ask me why.

“I’m scared.”

Steve sighed. He was exhausted, bone-tired after having Peter crawl into bed beside him for days on end.

“I know you are,” Steve murmured, lifting his arm to let Peter cuddle into his chest, “but you really need to start sleeping in your own bed soon.”

“But they’re there,” Peter said with a wobble in his voice. “They can’t get me in your room.”

Steve took a deep breath to stop himself from pointing out the flawed logic in that statement. Any monsters that were hiding in Peter’s closet would have been more than capable of running across the hallway and taking up residence in Steve and Tony’s instead.

Peter’s sudden obsession with there being creatures living under his bed had coincided almost perfectly with Tony’s disappearance on a business trip on the other side of the country, but Steve couldn’t exactly blame the little boy. It wasn’t like Steve was immune to the absence of his husband and the loneliness was only growing more prominent when he was kept awake every night by a cranky and clingy child.

Carding his hand through Peter’s hair and letting out a soft sigh of relief when his eyes fluttered closed, Steve shuffled down the bed a little more. _One more night_, he told himself. He’d let it go for one more night.

“I know, sweetheart, I know.”

/

It was dark when Steve woke up. He let out a low moan at the fact that he was awake before he questioned what it was that had made him regain consciousness before his alarm.

A noise; a muffled thump coming from the direction of the kitchen. Steve jolted in the bed, whole body freezing as he strained to listen for more sounds. A few more bumps followed, the light chinking of china, a very faint curse.

Steve turned his head and relief flowed through him when he saw that Peter was still sleeping soundly, his body dwarfed by the comforter tucked right under his chin and his curls an unruly mess that would never detangle in a million years. That was one less thing to worry about, at least. God knows Steve would never sleep again if Peter woke up to a real-life monster in the house.

Turning back to face the door and about to make a move to get out of bed, Steve jumped out of his skin at the sight of a figure in the doorway.

“Shit!” he cried, barely remembering to be quiet as he threw a hand over his mouth in shock.

“Steve!” a familiar voice called out to him, arms held up in front of the silhouette in surrender. “Steve, shit. Babe, it’s only me.”

“_Tony_?” Steve dropped back onto the mattress as he slid his hand down to his chest, heart trying to beat right out of his chest. “Oh, fu – don’t _do_ that to me.”

Tony padded into the room and crouched at the side of the bed, his hand hovering over Steve’s leg. “I texted you to say I was on my way home. Didn’t you see it?”

With a sigh, Steve sat up again and gestured for them to make their way out of the bedroom. They’d already been lucky not to wake Peter and Steve wasn’t taking any more chances.

“No,” Steve answered as he pulled the bedroom door shut behind him. “Can hardly remember to charge the damn thing, never mind think about where I put it.”

Tony winced when they made their way into the kitchen and Steve flicked the light on, bags under his eyes illuminated in full colour.

“Christ, baby. I know you said you were tired, but…”

Steve scoffed, rubbing a hand over his face and grimacing at the stubble that caught roughly. It was well past stubble, actually, and over half way to being a full beard with how many days it had been since Steve had had time to pick up a razor.

“Has he really not been sleeping?”

“No,” Steve said, resting his elbows on the table and letting his head fall into his palm. “He’s terrified all of a sudden. I can’t get him down in his room at all.”

Tony cursed as he switched on the kettle, fetching two mugs from the drying rack at the sink as quietly as he could. “He hasn’t watched anything?”

A yawn racked Steve’s body before he could give much of a verbal answer, but he shook his head anyway. “No. Like I said on the phone the other night, I have no idea where it came from. No films, no books, nothing at school. He’s just suddenly convinced there are monsters everywhere in there.”

“I’m sorry.” Tony crossed the room in a matter of seconds and wrapped his arms around Steve from behind. He dropped his head onto Steve’s shoulder and pressed kisses to the skin of his neck, nosing beneath Steve’s baggy t-shirt to get even closer. “I should have been here for you. For both of my boys.”

Steve lifted his hand and cupped Tony’s forearm against his chest. “You’re here now,” he said, closing his eyes and finally relaxing into his husband’s embrace as he’d longed to do for a solid week. “We’ve got you now.”

//

“_Daddy_,” Steve heard Peter say from inside his bedroom and knew trouble was starting. They’d had a good day finally back together, even managing to get Peter to take a long nap on the couch with Tony, but Steve had been dreading bedtime all day. “_Daddy, don’t make me stay in here. Please.”_

Steve bit his tongue as he waited to hear what Tony was going to say. It wasn’t that Tony was soft, but they’d all had a rough week or two and some days it was just easier to give in to the puppy-eyes instead of having to be the Bad Parent.

“_Oh, kiddo, don’t say that. I bought something very special back from my trip; something just for you.”_

There was a pause and a sniff.

_“What is it?”_

Even Steve was intrigued and he crept forward until he could peek round the doorframe into Peter’s room. He smiled at the sight of father and son cuddled on the little boy’s bed, Peter half on Tony’s lap with his arms clasped tightly around his favourite teddy.

“It’s an extra special potion,” Tony said, his eyes wide and voice low enough to create a bit of mystery. Peter’s attention was fully grasped – and Steve wasn’t far behind. “I had to go deep into the mountains to find this, Pete. Had to follow a secret trial and talk to a lot of important people.”

Peter gasped, head tilted back as he stared up at Tony. “What? Daddy, who did you talk to?”

“I talked to a witch.” Peter startled and Steve caught the way that Tony’s mouth twitched. “And then I talked to a _Monster Catcher_.”

Peter’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head and his arms squeezed his teddy nearly hard enough to split its stitches. “Daddy, that’s dan’rous! Monsters are scary.”

“Oh, I know,” Tony said with a grave nod. “That’s why they have to have Monster Catchers. But you know what?”

The look on Peter’s face was one of almost true terror and Steve’s heart clenched in his chest. They’d sort of thought it was just a childish fear, maybe even an excuse for Peter to spend the night in Steve’s big bed, but the boy looked genuinely scared at the mere mention of monsters.

“The Monster Catcher and the witch were very helpful. When I told them that I thought we might have a slight problem here, they started thinking of ways that we could solve it.” Tony hugged Peter to him for a moment and looked up, meeting Steve’s eyes through the crack in the door. With a motion of his head, Tony gestured for Steve to join them.

“What they say?” Peter asked into Tony’s shirt, nuzzling closer as Steve perched on the edge of the bed.

“They said that we could make a potion, kid.”

Steve reached out and took one of Tony’s hands in his, squeezing it lightly. Though he didn’t know where his husband was going with his story, he was certainly glad that he was no longer alone.

“Potion?”

“Mhm.” Tony very gently pushed Peter back up into a sitting position before he reached behind him and pulled out a spray bottle. It was a clear plastic with a large sticker on its front; a proud picture of a fuzzy blue monster with a thick red cross over the top of it. “This here, Petey-Pie, is a very special potion. It’s a monster repellent that I made myself!”

Peter’s eyes darted from Tony’s face down to the bottle in his hand, over and over and over again. “You?”

“Yup. Made it myself, babe, just for you.”

Steve’s heart was in his throat, tears threatening to fall. Never in a hundred years would he have ever come up with something so simple as a ‘monster repellent’, and yet Tony had thought of it whilst not even being around to deal with the problem first-hand. He had been knee-deep in meetings for a week and he’d still managed to take the time to find the materials for a DIY craft. It was bound to be nothing more than water in a dollar-store spray bottle, but Steve had never been more in love, never been more grateful for a single person ever in his life.

“Does it work?”

“Does it – _does it work_?” Tony echoed his son’s question, faux-outrage colouring his tone as he surged forward and caught Peter under his armpits, fingertips ticking the little boy and making him scream a laugh. “Of course it works, you cheeky little thing; Daddy made it!”

Steve couldn’t help his own laugh as he watched his two favourite people joke about, but he also couldn’t keep the thoughts of the past week out of his mind. Peter had had far too little sleep for a child of his age and Steve was desperate to rectify that.

“Alright,” he said finally, smiling as Peter dropped backwards onto the mattress with a heaving chest, “I think it’s way past someone’s bedtime.”

All too soon, the glee fell from Peter’s face and the fear came back. Before he could panic too much, Steve reached out and pushed his hair from his forehead. “The potion, Pete. It’s all going to be okay now, huh?”

“Will you do it?” Peter asked, hand darting out for the teddy he’d dropped in his excitement. “Will you spray it now?”

“Of course I will,” Steve said. Sharing a quick look with Tony – one that he hoped conveyed every overwhelming feeling of love and thankfulness and sheer, unbridled adoration – Steve took the bottle and stood up.

Making a big show of every movement he made, Steve walked across the room until he was stood at the closed door of Peter’s closet. Seeing the look on his son’s face and the way he was trying to hide behind Tony’s arm was all of the push Steve needed and he cracked the door open barely an inch before he started spraying.

After twenty seconds or so, he twisted to look over his shoulder, spray bottle held at the ready as he lifted an eyebrow. “Think I got them?”

“The bed,” Peter said, though a good three-quarters of his body was visible as he slowly moved away from Tony. “Under the bed, please.”

“Alright then.” Steve headed back to his family and crouched down. “I’m sorry, monsters,” he called out to the storage boxes and odd shoes he could see under Peter’s metal-framed bed, spraying them with what he really, _seriously_, hoped was just water, “but this house is not the place for you anymore.”

“See, kiddo?” Tony said, drawing Steve’s attention back to the top of the bed. “Nothing’s going to get you now. Not with Papa and Daddy here. You’re safe, okay?”

Finally, Peter nodded, face free of the hideous terror that had been etched all over it barely minutes previous.

“Think you can sleep now?”

“I think so, Daddy,” Peter said, voice already dropping low and eyes drooped. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Pete.” Tony pressed a kiss to Peter’s forehead before he stood up. “We love you so much.”

“Love too,” came some sort of garbled reply and Steve chuckled as he accepted Tony’s hand up.

“Goodnight, sweetheart.” Steve set the bottle of ‘Monster Repellent’ on the shelf next to Peter’s bed before he gave his own kiss to his son’s soft cheek. “Love you millions.”

/

“I love you,” Steve said, something close to desperation in his tone. They’d barely made it out of Peter’s bedroom and into their own before Steve had crowded Tony against the wall and caught his lips. “I do. God, Tony, I really do. I love you so much.”

“And I you,” Tony answered, accepting Steve’s deep kiss and surrendering to it quickly. “Missed you, baby. Missed you too much.”

The slide of Tony’s calloused hands over his back made Steve groan. It was too much after a week with no contact and yet never, _ever_ enough.

“I can’t believe you,” Steve said in between heady kisses, “I can’t believe you did that. Monster spray. Damn _monster_ spray.”

“It was easy,” Tony panted, lips brushing against Steve’s instead of moving back enough to talk clearly. “It was nothing.”

“Not nothing.” Sliding his hands down to grip Tony’s thighs, Steve pushed Tony harder into the wall. “That was not nothing. That was perfect. Amazing. I love you.”

“Anything for you. For either of you, both of you, I’d do anything.”

“Don’t ever leave again, you hear me?” Steve begged into Tony’s neck, tongue darting out to lick a thick stripe up Tony’s throat. “You’re never leaving me.”

“Never,” Tony replied, voice steady as his hands found their way into Steve’s hair, fingers tugging in a delicious way that had Steve’s teeth biting down on Tony’s collarbone. “I’m staying with my boys.”

“Promise?”

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that rhododendrons are Roger Taylor's favourite flower? Bc that's why I've included them in this month. Also, [I have a tumblr](https://s-horne.tumblr.com/). It's also full of useless facts


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